ed towards strangers. The strangers she saw
were generally the near relations of the young gentlemen whom her husband
received for educational purposes. She stood in the front drawing-room,
that is to say, in the most impressive chamber of that fortress which is
an Englishman's house. It was a formal room, arranged by a fixed rule and
the order of it was maintained inflexibly; no event could be imagined of
such terrible power as to have caused the displacement of one of those
chairs, of one of those ornaments upon the chimney-piece, of one of those
engravings upon the walls. The walls were papered with one shade of
green, the furniture was covered with material of another shade of green
and the well-spared carpet exhibited still a third variety of the same
colour. Mrs. Ambrose's sense of order did not extend to the simplest
forms of artistic harmony, but when it had an opportunity of impressing
itself upon inanimate objects which were liable to be moved, washed or
dusted, its effects were formidable indeed. She worshipped neatness and
cleanliness; she left the question of taste to others. And now she stood
in the keep of her stronghold, the impersonation of moral rectitude and
of practical housekeeping.

Mrs. Goddard entered rather timidly, followed by little Eleanor whose
ideas had been so much disturbed by the recent change in her existence,
that she had grown unusually silent and her great violet eyes were
unceasingly opened wide to take in the growing wonders of her situation.
Mrs. Goddard was still dressed in black, as when John Short had seen her
five months earlier. There was something a little peculiar in her
mourning, though Mrs. Ambrose would have found it hard to define the
peculiarity. Some people would have said that if she was really a widow
her gown fitted a little too well, her bonnet was a little too small, her
veil a little too short. Mrs. Ambrose supposed that those points were
suggested by the latest fashions in London and summed up the difficulty
by surmising that Mrs. Goddard had foreign blood.

"I should have called before," said the latter, deeply impressed by the
severe appearance of the vicar's wife, "but I have been so busy putting
my things into the cottage--"

"Pray don't think of it," answered Mrs. Ambrose. Then she added after a
pause, "I am very glad to see you." She appeared to have been weighing in
her conscience the question whether she could truthfully say so or not.
But Mrs. Goddar